A Global Goring 

Lawns May Contribute to Global Warming

Lush green lawns may not be as good for the environment as you might think.

A new study suggests that, in certain parts of the country, total emissions would actually be lower if there weren’t any lawns.

Previous studies have demonstrated that lawns comprised of turfgrass can potentially function as carbon sinks since they help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the maintenance of lawns — fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices — may generate greenhouse gas emissions that ultimately exceed four times the carbon they end up storing, according to the study.

“Lawns look great — they’re nice and green and healthy, and they’re photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon,” said researcher Amy Townsend-Small,who co-authored the study. “But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption.”

To reach their conclusion, the researchers sampled grass from four parks around Irvine, Calif. that contained either ornamental lawn turf or athletic field turf, which tended to be more trampled and required replanting and frequent aeration. Samples were taken from the soil and air above the turf, and analyzed to measure carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions. The investigators then compared that data to the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that resulted from maintaining the turf, which included fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production.

The results, detailed in the forthcoming issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are considered among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally. In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of the carbon that was sequestered. But day-to-day management required fossil fuel consumption that released about four times more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up.

Athletic fields fared even worse. They didn’t trap nearly as much carbon as ornamental grass but required just as much emission-generating care.

“It’s impossible for these lawns to be net greenhouse gas sinks because too much fuel is used to maintain them,” Townsend-Small said.

Tags: Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Carbon Sequestration, Fossil Fuel Consumption, Green Lawns, Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Osama bin Laden sought to draw a wider public into his fight against the United States in a new message Friday, dropping his usual talk of religion and holy war and focusing instead on an unexpected topic: global warming.

The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar. “Bin Laden and Al Gore are now on the same page so global warming must be true.”

Read more:Yahoo news

As the political debates heat up, the majority of the American public still feels that the Earth is heating up as well. There has been a multitude of research conducted exhibiting that the Earth is, in fact, heating up. (Many Global warming supporters just
threw their hands up in the air.) Although the Earth is getting hotter, there is nothing horribly wrong. The Earth constantly heats and cools as it is a living and breathing mass of water, dirt, and gases. Changes are to be expected. Do we, as intelligent human beings, think that a planet that was created through an event labeled the “Big Boom” is going to be an utterly and completely stable environment? Who are we to access the recent heating trend and call it abnormal? Furthermore, who decided that this heating trend was the fault of man?? Many global warming supporters claim that glaciers are melting and shrinking. Are they? Some glaciers are expanding actually, as stated in my last article regarding global warming. At this juncture, however, I will admit that some glaciers are shrinking. Glaciers in Antarctica have been shown to be shrinking. A possible explanation for this is a volcano centered under the ice sheets. Sometime around 207 B.C., this volcano erupted spewing hot lava and ash over the ice, causing large areas to melt (Chang, 2008). Little is know about this volcano. If this volcano is still active and magma is breaching the surface of the Earth’s crust, could it not heat both the ocean water and the ice layers? Under further research is done, there is not adequate answer to this question. With other glaciers growing larger, the glacial melting support used by global warming supporters is now debunked.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Alternative Fuel, Antarctica, Co2 Emissions, Co2 Levels, Gases, Glaciers, Global Warming, Hot Lava, Ocean Water, Political Debates, Volcano Active

The world’s leading climate change scientists have been caught out making unfounded claims about global warming for the second time in just over a week.

Experts appointed by the United Nations said rising temperatures were to blame for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

But it has emerged that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the statement, made in 2007, on an unpublished report that had not been properly reviewed by other scientists.

The report’s author has since withdrawn the claim, saying there is not enough evidence to link climate change to worsening natural disasters, and criticised the use of his data as ‘completely misleading’. Continue Reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Climate Summit, Global Warming Climate Change, Ipcc, Melting Glaciers, Natural Disaster, Natural Disasters

Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together, under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress. The built-in “marriage penalty” in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say “I do.”

The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Congressional Democrats, Federal Poverty Level, Health Bill, Health Care Legislation, Health Insurance, Health Insurance Coverage, Health Insurance Premiums, Marriage Penalty, Married Couples, Senate Bill

“Polar Bear Manifesto”

U.S. CAPITOL BUILDING

With a bang the Senate hearing room’s double-doors suddenly flew open. A SWAT team of 12 Navy SEALs in full riot gear and body armor stormed in, knelt down and aimed their MP5 submachine guns at Grandpa.

As the SEALs nodded to each other and took aim at Grandpa’s chest, a desperate voice behind them in the hallway cried out.

“Don’t shoot,” shouted Anderson Cooper, as he and a CNN cameraman rushed in. “Not until I get the exclusive interview.”

Grandpa stayed cool. He had a dozen TV cameras pointed at him and he knew they and Anderson Cooper were his best chance to avoid being shot to death.

“Senator Franken?” Grandpa asked over his shoulder without moving a muscle. “Do you really want the whole world to see a talking polar bear killed inside the U.S. Capitol Building on live television?”

Continue Reading »

Tags: Anderson Cooper, Capitol Building, Energy Industry, Mr Bear, Polar Bear, Senate Hearing, Senator Boxer, Tv Cameras, United States Senate

I was born and raised in Oklahoma in a very conservative, Republican household. I was raised believing that Republicans are for small government and low taxes. I was raised to believe that only the Republicans shared my Christian values and they had the safety of our country well in hand. Democrats, by contrast, wanted the government to fix everything, wanted to raise everyone’s taxes, were pro-abortion, and would do nothing to protect our country.

As I got older, I began to question whether the Republican Party has lived up to what it professes. I believe in all the things they profess: I believe in having strong national security, I believe in the sanctity of life, I believe in fiscal responsibility. But what I’ve found in my research is that the Republicans don’t put these values into practice.

I’m writing articles, based on the research I’ve done, that dispel the myths of Republicans. This article focuses on the economic myths: Republicans are fiscally responsible, Republicans believe in less government spending, and Republicans are better for the economy. My references appear at the end of the article.

First, some definitions. Political economists often talk about the national debt and the federal deficit. These two terms mean different things. The national debt refers to the accumulation of all the money the US government has borrowed over all the years that we’re still paying back. By contrast, the federal deficit refers to how much money the US government is spending over and above its budget in a single year. So the deficit reverts to zero at the beginning of each fiscal year whereas the national debt does not.

Now let’s take a look at the facts. We’ll start with national debt and raw numbers. In 2000, when Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Today, after seven years of George W. Bush, it is $9.6 trillion. Bush has almost doubled our national debt in eight short years.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Accumulation, Bill Clinton, Federal Deficit, George W Bush, Government Spending, National Debt, Republicans, Us Government

There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was hit by an inconvenient one yesterday.

The former vice president, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” became entangled in a new climate change row.

Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr. Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowski as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Gore.

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

Tags: Al Gore, Arctic Ice, Climate Change Summit, Climatologist, Controversy, East Anglia, Former Vice President, Global Warming, Likelihood, Polar Ice Cap, Scientists

In the unfolding debate over “ClimateGate,” the affair of the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that offer an inconvenient peek behind the curtain of climate science, one thing is clear. Virtually every commentator’s position on the issue - is this a scandal that exposes global warming as a scientific sham, or a faux scandal stoked by climate-change denial propaganda? - can be predicted by his or her politics. You can look at the byline or the publication, and predict with near-100 percent accuracy what the article will say. It is no surprise that The Wall Street Journal deplores the arrogant and dogmatic mindset of the “warmists,” or that The New Republic assails the brazenness of the “deniers.”

While the facts are ostensibly the same, the interpretations differ so dramatically that we might as well be talking about two different realities. For instance, when CRU director Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures in a particular period, was this an admission to manipulating and fudging temperature data? Or is this simply careless use of language that gives sinister overtones to entirely innocuous activities? Defenders of the scientists point out that “Mike’s Nature trick” refers to a technique quite openly used by one of Jones’ correspondents, Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann, in a 1998 article in Nature magazine, and that “hiding” the decline is simply another way to describe adjusting the data. Their critics say that the data was being manipulated, casting doubt on some of the most widely accepted calculations of temperature increases in the past 100 years. Continue Reading »

Tags: Brazenness, Climate Change Skeptics, Climate Research Unit, Climate Science, Climatologist, Deniers, East Anglia, Environmentalist, George Monbiot, Michael Mann, Nature Magazine, New Republic, Overtones, Penn State University, Research Unit At The University Of East Anglia, Sham, Temperature Data, Temperature Increases, University Of East Anglia, Wall Street Journal

The judged ruled that he has to put a disclaimers on his film Inconvenient Truth….stating the nine lies and that this was not a scientific film…that it was a political film…which it is..to fill his pockets even deeper…

AL GORE IS A  LIAR..AND THE JUDGE CALLED HIM OUT…

Al Gore’s award-winning climate change documentary was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, a judge ruled yesterday.

He went on to list those errors:

Error one

Al Gore: A sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”.

The judge’s finding: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s ”wake-up call“. It was common ground that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia.”

Error two

Gore: Low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are already “being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.”

Judge: There was no evidence of any evacuation having yet happened.

Error three

Gore: The documentary described global warming potentially “shutting down the Ocean Conveyor” - the process by which the Gulf Stream is carried over the North Atlantic to western Europe.

Judge: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it was “very unlikely” it would be shut down, though it might slow down.

Error four

Gore: He asserted - by ridiculing the opposite view - that two graphs, one plotting a rise in C02 and the other the rise in temperature over a period of 650,000 years, showed “an exact fit”.

Judge: Although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, “the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts”.

Error five

Gore: The disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was expressly attributable to global warming.

Judge: This “specifically impressed” David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, but the scientific consensus was that it cannot be established that the recession of snows on Mt Kilimanjaro is mainly attributable to human-induced climate change.

Error six

Gore: The drying up of Lake Chad was used in the film as a prime example of a catastrophic result of global warming, said the judge.

Judge: “It is generally accepted that the evidence remains insufficient to establish such an attribution. It is apparently considered to be far more likely to result from other factors, such as population increase and over-grazing, and regional climate variability.”

Error seven

Gore: Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans to global warming.

Judge: There is “insufficient evidence to show that”.

Error eight

Gore: Referred to a new scientific study showing that, for the first time, polar bears were being found that had actually drowned “swimming long distances - up to 60 miles - to find the ice”.

Judge: “The only scientific study that either side before me can find is one which indicates that four polar bears have recently been found drowned because of a storm.” That was not to say there might not in future be drowning-related deaths of bears if the trend of regression of pack ice continued - “but it plainly does not support Mr Gore’s description”.

Error nine

Gore: Coral reefs all over the world were bleaching because of global warming and other factors.

Judge: The IPCC had reported that, if temperatures were to rise by 1-3 degrees centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and mortality, unless the coral could adapt. But separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing, and pollution was difficult.

Tags: Al Gore, C02, Environment Secretary, Global Warming, Gulf Stream, Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, Mt Kilimanjaro, Political Film, Scientific Film, Sea Level Rise